Brother Rex Proud: The Carnival Mas’ Camp, a Culture-Based Model of Education

• In Event: Cultural Expressions and Creativity in Education: Voices From Africa and the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper explores the imagined possibilities of the Carnival mas’ camp as a culture based model of education.
This paper uses post/anticolonial theories, a social constructivist perspective, and data from an ethnographic study on teaching/learning practices and Trinidad Carnival (Author, 2005; 2009) to explore the imagined possibilities of making the Carnival mas’ camp a culture-based model of education. A Caribbean woman/native ethnographer, uses the narrative mode to present her reflections on how an analysis of the literature and a review of the findings of her study impact her research agenda. She comes to appreciate and value the power of the cultural art forms that Caribbean scholars such as the late Brother Rex Nettleford (1995), Lloyd Best (1968, 2001, 2003), Louise Bennett (1975), Benitez-Rojo (1996) and others continually pushed us in the Caribbean to view as educational tools. In this paper the researcher describes and explores the importance of the ‘inward stretch’ as we, Caribbean educators, seek to explore the imagined possibilities for research and activities that will benefit our local/global educational communities.
The paper uses alternative means of representation that include music, images, and narratives in telling the story of how ethnography as a methodology allows for this understanding, appreciation, and realization of the possible power of the mas’ camp as a culture-based model of education.
This issue is very significant in an era when ‘globalization’ is both an opportunity and a problematique that disrupt indigenous ways of knowing and forms of knowledge in non- school contexts.

Author

• Janice B. Fournillier, Georgia State University